The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for managing programs for distributed processing systems, and more particularly, to a program managing method and apparatus suitable for developing programs at a plurality of processing units while definitely maintaining a mutual relationship between the developed programs.
Conventionally, programs have been developed in a centralized manner. Therefore, in developing a new program version from an original program by way of modification/addition, the new program has been assigned only a serial number (generation number) representative of the number of revisions added to the original program. It therefore becomes possible to judge how old a developed program is. (Refer to the description of JP-A-60-252952, for example).
This conventional method however does not consider the case wherein in a distributed processing system having a plurality of processing units, a new program is developed by a processing unit by performing modification/addition of a certain program developed by another processing unit. In such a case, if the above conventional method is used, there is a possibility of assigning the same generation number to programs having different contents.